Everyone has an opinion about the BBC. One day, it is pandering to the masses; the next it is arrogant, elitist and out of touch. Then again, the “middlebrow” path can be perilous too. In the early days of radio, the author Virginia Woolf worried that BBC studio heads were too busy catering to an audience not in her native edgy Bloomsbury but in respectably dull South Kensington.
In 2022, when the BBC celebrates its centenary and its future lies in some doubt, it is time for a little perspective. Therein lies the value of David Hendy’s new history of the BBC. His is a tale of creative endeavour and technological innovation, beset by a constant tension between leading and following the audience. In the UK, where jealous newspaper rivals and hostile politicians have kicked lumps out of the institution known semi-affectionately as “Auntie”, holding the nation’s attention and respect has seemingly become an impossible task.
In the founding years, in the aftermath of first world war, life was more straightforward. The BBC was guided by a “High Victorian…
